Alabama running back Damien Harris and Auburn quarterback Jarrett Stidham played 7- and 8-year-old Little League football together in Richmond, Kentucky. Stidham is No.24 in the picture, and Harris is directly below him.

Damien Harris had a temperature of 104 degrees the morning before the biggest game of his life.

He tried to eat, but he could only hold down four saltine crackers.

Harris' mom wasn't going to let him play, but Damien begged and pleaded. He was seven years old, and he was not missing the little league Super Bowl. It had been such a transformative fall. At first, the future star running back for the University of Alabama hated football, and wanted to quit because his helmet was too tight. Then two important things happened during the season, and everything changed.

One, he got a new helmet. More importantly, he scored the first touchdown of his life.

It was all preamble to the championship game, but then Damien got sick.

His 49ers were playing the Browns in the Super Bowl, and the game was inside Eastern Kentucky University's stadium. For seven- and eight-year olds from Richmond, Kentucky, football didn't get any bigger. Damien was determined to play despite his illness because his teammates needed him.

In an almost unbelievable turn of fate, one of those teammates is playing in Saturday's Iron Bowl for Auburn. Damien's quarterback on the Richmond Parks & Rec 7- and 8-year-old 49ers was Jarrett Stidham. That's right. Jarrett Stidham, as in the quarterback for the Auburn Tigers.

On Saturday, Harris' Alabama and Stidham's Auburn will line up against each other in one of the biggest Iron Bowls in the history of the rivalry.

Harris and Stidham are close friends, and, until now, few people outside of their teammates knew they share such a close bond. In a state as small as Alabama, there have been many high school and community connections throughout the history of the Iron Bowl. It's one of the game's dynamics that has made the rivalry so intense. But a star running back and star quarterback from the same Little League football team in small-town Kentucky?

The connection between Harris and Stidham adds a new chapter of intrigue to a rivalry game that is already college football's greatest epic saga. The winner of Saturday's game will represent the SEC West in the SEC championship and, then, possibly the College Football Playoff semifinals.

Harris has already played in two College Football Playoffs, winning the championship as a freshman, and coming close last season. Both years, Stidham was rooting for his childhood friend to win it all. Auburn's quarterback still wishes the best for Damien, but not at the expense of Auburn losing the Iron Bowl.

Harris shares the same sentiment. He wants Stidham to play his best on Saturday, but, obviously, doesn't want Auburn to win.

"Not a lot of people know I'm originally from Kentucky, so it's cool we're getting to play against each other in the biggest rivalry game in college football," Stidham said. "It's cool to sit and look back and say, wow, we've come a really long way, and we remained friends throughout all of it. Regardless of the outcome [Saturday], we're still going to be friends, so it's a pretty cool situation."

Every week this season, Auburn's radio broadcast has introduced their quarterback as being from Stephenville, Texas. Stidham is listed in Auburn's media guide as a native of Stephenville, Texas. That's not exactly accurate.

Yes, Stephenville, Texas, transformed Stidham into one of college football's best young quarterbacks, but it's not the genesis for his love of the game. Stidham was born in Kentucky, and that's where he played his first three seasons of football. His season with Harris was his first playing tackle football.

In separate one-on-one interviews with AL.com, both players remembered their experiences with the 49ers in vivid detail. There was one common thread to both conversations, a lasting fear of Keonta Goggins.

Every Little League or Pee Wee football park in America has that one legendary tackler who was somehow born to knock kids into next week. In Richmond, Kentucky, that kid was Keonta Goggins. Goggins was the son of the 49ers' head coach, and he was the player everyone feared. Goggins hit Harris so hard one time, he vowed never to be tackled again. Stidham said Keonta "literally knocked the snot out of me one practice."

"From that moment on, I was always going to lay the boom instead of taking the hit," Stidham said. "That's probably the thing I remember the most. I got the crap knocked out of me. That was kind of like the first real time. But after that my mood completely shifted, and I was just going to try to destroy people myself."

Keonta's father, Mike Goggins, gets emotional when he talks about that original 49ers' team. He remains close friends with the Harris family, and he used to arrive at practice an hour early to work one-on-one with Stidham.

"Coaching that team was one of my life's great pleasures," Goggins said.

The 49ers went undefeated, only allowed six points all season, won the Super Bowl against the Browns and, finally, produced several college athletes, including the starting running back for Alabama and the starting quarterback for Auburn. In other words, Goggins was one heck of a coach.

"Mike has always been that coach who would tear you down and build you back up," said Lynn Harris, Damien's mother. "Now, granted, these were seven- and eight-year-old kids we're talking about, but he would get onto you and then turn around and pat them on the head or the butt and say, 'I'm proud of you anyways no matter what, and you're doing a good job, and we're going to keep working at it until you get it.'"

He grew into a father figure for Damien after that first season, which was the first season of tackle football for Alabama's running back. It was almost his last.

Harris says he "hated football," and both his mom and Little League football coach confirmed that. At first, he hated the helmets. They were too tight.

"Every day at the end of practice he would say his head hurt, so I personally went and bought him another helmet with my own money," Goggins said. "I said, 'If you fuss or saying anything, me and you are personally going to have problems.'"

Goggins will be watching the Iron Bowl like a proud father, and can't root against either one of his former players.

"If I had a shirt that was half Alabama and half Auburn, then I would wear it," he said.

Goggins and Lynn Harris, Damien's mom, grew up together and remain close. That first season tested their friendship, though. For overly protective parents, the first season of tackle football can be a difficult learning experience. Damien's mom voiced her displeasure during practice.

During one practice early in the season, Goggins put his son, the legendary hitter, at safety, and Damien at running back.

"My son, he got a pretty good shot on him, and she came off the hill, and her nose was flared out, and she said, 'You're not going to treat my baby like that,'" Goggins said.

The next practice, Goggins called a parents-coaches meeting.

"These kids are mine when I'm on the field, and I'm trying to make them the very best they can be," he said to the parents, and Lynn Harris in particular. "Some kids you have to baby, and some kids you have to really chew. I think I'm a pretty good judge of things, but if you guys don't like how I do it, then we probably can get you moved to another team."

Damien stayed on the team.

Looking back, Goggins said he "would have died" if Damien left the team because "he was one of my better running backs in the end."

Stidham played two seasons of flag football before that first year of tackle football with the 49ers, and even as a seven-year-old he was talented player. The opposite was true for Damien. For the first half of the season, Damien didn't want to play in games. He preferred watching from the sidelines.

That all changed when his mom intervened during a game, and gave her son an ultimatum.

"We were in Estill County one day, on Saturday, and when I tell you it was freezing and snowing, oh my gosh it was cold, and here Damien is, happy go lucky, sitting on the bench, drinking up all the water while all the other boys are out there playing," Lynn Harris said.

The game was tied 0-0, and, as Harris remembers it, it was in its sixth overtime.

Said Lynn Harris: "I went over to him when he was sitting on the bench, drinking all the water and I said, 'Do you want to play football?' And he said, 'Yeah.' And I said, 'Well you better get your hind parts off of this bench, stop drinking up the water, get in the game, and start playing because I am not wasting my time, my energy, my money for you to sit and drink up the water."

Fearing what would happen when they got home after the game, Damien stood up off the bench, entered the game, and scored a 98-yard touchdown. That moment, according to his mom, changed everything.

"I hated it," Damien said of football until that game. "I begged my mom forever to let me quit, but we never would, and then it finally got to a point where it was either, 'You're going to play or, we're going to go home,'

"But I was scared then because what's going to happen when we get home? Am I going to get in trouble? So, then I stuck with it the rest of the year, and then it ended up working out for me."

Harris blossomed into five-star recruit. Far away in Stephenville, Texas, Stidham also grew into a five-star recruit. The two former childhood teammates reconnected at The Opening, a recruiting event hosted by Nike in Beaverton, Oregon.

"We started talking and have been in touch ever since," Harris said.

Their friendship picked up like they had never lost touch. When Harris learned that Stidham was leaving Baylor, he and his mom prayed that Damien's old friend would go anywhere except one school, Auburn.

"We both prayed that he wouldn't go to Auburn because I just knew how good he was, and I was just like, 'Man, he can't go to Auburn. I hope he goes anywhere but Auburn,'" Harris said. "And then when I found out he was going there, I texted my mom and was like, 'I guess we'll see each other again.'"

The last game Damien and Jarrett played together was that Super Bowl against the Browns. Harris had a temperature of 104 degrees the morning of the game. His mom let him play, and he scored a 104-yard touchdown."

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for Alabama Media Group. He's on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.

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